10 Aug A Slice of Heaven on the Côte d’Azur
Two decades ago I enjoyed one of the most memorable meals of my life on a sun-swept terrace in the village of St-Paul de Vence, in southern France. Today, on a similarly sun-swept day in northern California, I’ve been perusing my journal from that long-ago summer. I’ve just now turned to the pages I wrote that afternoon, where a few crumbs linger still in the creases and a brief blush of Provencal wine colors the lines. Suddenly mottled sunlight suffuses my office, and the soft scent of garlic wafts in on an incongruous breeze.
Here’s what I wrote:
I am ensconced under a white parasol at a red bouquet-brightened table, looking out on a somnolent scene of green hills and straw-colored houses with terra-cotta roofs.
I have just finished a plate of green melon and jambon de Parme, and now the waiter has placed before me with a flourish a platter of grilled sea bream, known locally as daurade.
Around me is a symphony of sounds: the clink of silverware on china, the splash of wine into glasses, the mellifluous laughter and multilingual chatter of diners in summery clothes.
We are all caught up in a buoyant bubble of bonté and bonhomie — a celebration of life’s bounty and of our own good fortune to be sharing it on this sun-dappled summer terrace in the middle of one of the most blessed places on Earth.
Little slices of lemon float in the pitcher of water on my table, and as I take another sip of wine and contemplate the still life – “Daurade with green beans and rice” — before me, I feel a little like floating, too.
To my left is a vibrant Leger mural, wrought into a section of the terrace’s streetside wall. And straight ahead are the rustic interior rooms of this celebrated hotel-restaurant, where I wandered a half hour ago in search of a restroom and instead found an astonishment of modern masterpieces — canvases by Modigliani, Bonnard, Dufy, Utrillo, Chagall, Picasso, Braque, Matisse, and Miro, among others, all given by the artists when they were still struggling unknowns to the generous and perspicacious owner, Paul Roux, in lieu of payment.
This place is an enchanted little world, I think — reluctant to take fork to fish, reluctant even to move, wanting to hold and savor this moment forever.
Awaiting me, I know, is a medieval meander through St.-Paul; an espresso at the Café de la Place, where I will watch local gentlemen enact their afternoon rite of boules; and then the piney Fondation Maeght, with its incomparable open-air display of modern art.
But for now the world is wondrously reduced to this: the sunlight catching in the canopy of branches above and blessing the hills beyond, the murmuring music of the diners behind me, the perfume of the flowers mingling with the scents of the chef’s seasonings, the exuberant atmosphere of artwork all around, the cobbled stones beneath me, the fish and bread before me, the wine as red as the flowers, the tablecloth as white as the parasol; an ineffable moment of ease and artfulness, a soul-fulfilling scene of life lived to the full — the whole afternoon floating like a lemon in a pitcher of Evian, a little slice of heaven on the Côte d’Azur.
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